Language question

[Mark Rafn]

On Wed, 7 May 2003, Abe Kornelis wrote:

> --> What I mean is that I might die and my wife would inherit all rights
> I have. Also I might sell my copyrights (or give them away) to a company.
> In either case, I would expect that the transfer of rights does not
> invalidate any rights the users have.

This is correct.  Because you've granted permissions on these works 
already, you no longer have the exclusive right to do certain things, and 
so that right will not transfer.  Rights which you DO retain can be 
transferred.

> That is, any obligations incurred would remain valid. E.g. the
> obligation not to withdraw contributions from the open-source community.

Why do you see this as an obligation?  You have no obligation to continue 
publishing your contributions to anyone.

> --> As stated above, I was thinking of obligations that relate to the
> software.

I don't think there are any such obligations, unless you've made them 
seperately (such as a 3-year written offer under GPLv2 section 3b).  Even 
so, this obligation remains on you (or your estate), not on a copyright 
assignee.  

> When ownership is transferred then associated obligations must pass along
> with it. Otherwise the horror scenario appears: company A releases open
> source software. Many users supply contributions. company A sells software
> to company B (owned by same persons) but retains all obligations.

Company A does not necessarily have rights to contributions made, unless
the contributor gave them such rights.  If they do, then this scenario is
perfectly valid.

> Company A ceases to exist. Company B now is owner without obligations
> to the authors of the contributions. 

Indeed.  I recommend contributors NOT assign copyright of their derived 
works, but instead make them available under a compatible license.  

> The complete software package is withdrawn from open source by company
> B.

Nope.  Company B can release new work under proprietary licenses, and can
stop distributing the open-source version, but any copies of the
open-source work are still there, and can be freely copied and further
modified by anyone who wishes.

> There goes the work we have collectively put into the contributions.

It's still there, just no longer supported by a company.  The community 
has lost nothing.

It's important to understand that there are generally NO OBLIGATIONS in an
open-source licenses.  They are purely a grant of permission, which may be
conditioned on certain behaviors.  You have no legal requirement to follow
any open-source license in any way, but you may choose to do so in order
to recieve permissions from the copyright holder that you don't otherwise
have.

Likewise, the copyright holder of an open-source work is not making an 
obligation to the community or to any recipient.  He only grants 
permission to do things which would otherwise not be allowed.
--
Mark Rafn    dagon at dagon.net    <http://www.dagon.net/>  
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